The Midnight Boat to Palermo and Other Stories

by Rosemary Aubert

  “What are you doing up here?” she asked.

  “I needed to use the washroom. The one downstairs had a cop in it.”

  She nodded, motioned toward the stairs. I preceded her down and sat at my desk, pretending to work at the computer.

  Later that afternoon, Jass came up from the kitchen. She was crying again. She stood in front of my desk with a small white piece of paper in her hand. She pushed it under my nose. It smelled of stew. There was a bright green piece of pea stuck to it.

  “Nobody’s all bad, you know that,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “A guy apologizes and the next thing you know, he gets shot….”

  “What?”

  I looked down at the paper. “Jass, it says, ‘I’m sorry….’”

  “I found it in the pot, just like that other note. He wrote it. He apologized.”

  “But it’s typed—on a computer!”

  “Doesn’t matter. I know it’s him. They can type and use computers and read and everything. And anyway, I seen you both. I know you was teaching him things. At least he was a man. At least he apologized for threatening to kill me.”

  I handed her back the torn slip of paper. There wasn’t much I could have done for Pete Peters. Even if I could have taught him faster, I doubt he could have read and understood whatever instructions were in that stack of letters. But at least someone would have a forgiving memory of him….

  I went back to work. There was a lot of confusion, of course, but right in the middle of it, a cab pulled up and a very young-looking man wearing prison-release denim and carrying a small duffle bag got out of it and started up the walk.

  I checked my list. A new resident. Not really due for several hours, but here now. Disoriented. Facing life on the outside after who knew how long inside.

  When he saw the cops buzzing around, he looked shocked, then terrified. I felt sorry for him. I left my desk, went out onto the verandah, met him on the walk. I led him up the path toward the house. Just as we got to the steps of the verandah, I looked up. Fulsome-Bright was looking out the window—right at me. Her expression seemed to warn me that I had just broken the rules and was going to face the consequences.

  I looked back at her. I smiled. Silently, I mouthed a greeting. “Stuff it up there, sister,” I said.

  SAFE WATER

  I see at once that I’m the only one. And I know it’s going to be even hotter inside than out. The minute Daddy and I step through the door of St. Emmet’s Church Hall, I notice the tiny air conditioner groaning with slow inefficiency at the window, the dewy mustache of perspiration marring the shaved perfection of the welcoming chairman. On the long refreshment table covered in white plastic, the various homemade dips have gone liquid inside partially dismantled circles of limp crackers. A lazy fly investigates, loses interest, moves away. In a corner, a few elderly men hover around a refrigerator, fiddling with a drinks dispenser in the center of the door. A circle of wives waits, each with two large plastic glasses in her hands.

  “Gave me a minute’s pause, young lady,” the grinning chairman declares, taking my fingers in a surprisingly strong grip. “Figured one of us had found the fountain of youth. You don’t look a day over thirty-five.”

  “My daughter,” Daddy says, his smile the same as always—warm, genuine, unrevealing, “my daughter Teresa.”

  “The writer,” the chairman offers. “We know all about her, now, don’t we? Only daughter to show up at the reunion—and no sons.”

  Daddy’s smile widens and I can’t tell—never could—whether from pride or embarrassment. “Let me get you a drink, honey,” he says. “Beer okay?”

  I nod, not really willing to relinquish him to the group around the beer spigot. He’s the only person I know in this crowd gathered to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of their high-school graduation.

  With his hand on my waist, he leads me toward the fridge. It occurs to me that Daddy has always led me through crowded rooms like this, just the way the heroes in the romance novels I write for a living lead the heroines. I try to remember whether the men I’m seeing at the moment do that.

  “Pete Minelli—the brain! Pete!” A hearty voice interrupts my thoughts as a small, round, bald man grabs my father’s hand and begins to pump it as though that were the only way to get the words to flow from Daddy’s mouth.

  “Bobby, isn’t it?” Daddy asks, his smile gracious. “Bobby Malloy. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

  But Bobby doesn’t answer. “Hey, hon,” he cries to a large woman in a fuchsia cotton dress that matches exactly her sandals, purse, necklace, “here’s the guy I was telling you about—Pete, Pete Minelli the brain. Remember I told you about Pete. So—didja become a college professor or what?”

  “High school teacher,” Daddy answers without apology or pride. He’s retired now. Sometimes when I come home from the city to visit him, people still stop me on the street to tell me he was their teacher. He taught for forty-three years. His final yearly paycheck was sixty-two thousand dollars. Two thousand dollars more than my first royalty advance.

  “This is my daughter,” Daddy says to Bob, and then to several others who gather around. Suddenly he’s the center of attention. I haven’t see Daddy draw a crowd like this in a couple of years, not since the Christmas he tried on all his presents at once, then did a comic striptease right down to his boxer shorts. The rare strain of exhibitionism has always been a surprising element of Daddy’s quiet makeup. The sort of thing I wonder whether he showed more of when he was young—before I was born.

  “My daughter,” he says again and again. His hand on my elbow is hot and dry.

  “You a brain, too?” someone asks jovially. “Must be if you’re a writer. Ever been on TV?”

  Yes. I tell them about a talk show I taped this very morning in New York.

  “Don’t get that show in Denver,” one of the women says. I’ve forgotten that, unlike Daddy, most of these people have long ago moved away from their hometown, this pretty, sleepy little city nestled in the hills of south-central New York State. Mark Twain country, they call it now that Madison Avenue has had a go at southern New York tourism.

  “Nope, never heard of that show,” someone else remarks. “Can you use another beer, Pete?”

  An hour later, Daddy’s still surrounded, but I’ve snuck away toward the table in the corner for a rest from the smiling. I’m trying to be inconspicuous and nearly succeeding when a lone man, playing a loud, strange song on a harmonica suddenly stands beside me. His clothes are impeccable and his hair is thick and black, but his whole body seems wrinkled—scuffed. “Who are you?” he asks, his lips leaving the harmonica for the briefest of moments.

  “Pete Minelli’s daughter.”

  “You a brain, too?”

  “I…”

  “Listen—” he begins, “I’ve done a lot in these last fifty years, don’t think I haven’t. I’ve played this thing all over America. Been on talk shows in New York City….”

  Before I can say a thing, I feel my father’s hand at my elbow again. “Time to go, honey,” he says, nodding to the harmonica-player. “Nice to see you again, Ben.”

  “More than one kind of brain in this world, Minelli,” Ben cryptically remarks as Daddy leads me toward the door. When we exit, the chairman, who’s still standing guard, hands him a newspaper-wrapped package the size of a football.

  “Mango,” the chairman says. “Sam Matthews grows ‘em down in Florida. Didn’t want to leave them down there to rot, so he brought ’em along. Free of charge, Pete.”

  “Thanks,” Daddy says, his smile a little tired. “Thanks a lot. See you tomorrow.”

  “You like mangoes, Dad?” I ask.

  “Don’t know,” he says. “Never tasted one.”

  When we get back to the house, we share the mango. “Looks good,” he says, carefully slicing the bright orange flesh of the fruit. I watch his hand. All his life Daddy has been a neat, precise man. I have to think har
d to remember ever seeing him dirty. But when I do remember, the images come flooding back. Daddy paint-spattered every October, tackling some portion of the house. Daddy in greasy coveralls fixing his car. Daddy covered in sawdust, soil, snow…

  When we finish, he rinses the knife, swipes the tabletop with a damp cloth. He disappears into the family room and comes out with his high-school yearbook.

  “Here,” he says softly, “is the real brain of the class—” His finger, slightly bent with arthritis, rests near a photo of a girl who was seventeen then, half a century ago. Out of her eyes shines unmistakable intelligence and an innocent beauty that takes my breath away. “Alice Tunbridge Smith,” Daddy says with respect. “Her average was three-quarters of a point higher than mine.”

  “Show me you, Dad,” I ask, and he flips the stiff pages, releasing the slight odor of mildew. Beneath his picture, one I’ve seen many times before, is a quote. “Born to excel.”

  “Everybody got a slogan,” Daddy says. “Some people lived up to theirs; some didn’t.”

  “Did you, Dad? Did you excel?”

  “Sure,” he says, smiling at me. “Sure I did.”

  Next day there’s an autumnal haziness to the air, but the temperature is in the nineties. Daddy and I are standing on the steps of a small, enclosed wooden gazebo on the campus of Elmira College staring in the window. Inside are Mark Twain’s typewriter, his chair, his cot, even a pile of notes for a book. A small sign reminds visitors that in this little octagonal building he wrote what lots of people still think is the best American novel ever published.

  “Used to be right smack on top of a hill,” Daddy tells me. ”When he wrote Huck Finn, he could stare out for miles. But there was another building up there on his in-laws’ land—a cabin for his kids and their cousins, I guess. Your grandfather told me that it was deserted when he was a boy but that you could go to the main house and they’d give you a key. It had a fireplace and my father said the boys used to cook potatoes up there.” He smiled as if an old memory had just struck him. “Alice Smith wrote a paper about it once and got one hundred per cent.”

  We stroll the grounds. I must have visited this campus with Daddy a hundred times—it’s one of his favorite places. He steers me toward an exhibit hall. The walls of the large room are lined with photos of Twain and of scenes from his colorful life. I’m studying a panel depicting life on the Mississippi river boats and reading how Twain chose his pen name, which, the caption tells me, means “safe water,” when Daddy plucks at my sleeve. “Look at this, honey…this is probably one of the kids that cabin was built for.”

  The picture shows a tiny girl in a stiff, lacy pinafore. The caption beneath tells how once this same little girl went flying down a hill in her baby carriage because her father had let go of it to light his cigar….

  “He was a bum. A regular bum. A lot of writers are, and Twain’s no exception,” Daddy comments later. It’s afternoon and we’re sitting on the patio of the Andersons. They went to school with Daddy, too. Mrs. Anderson has read every one of my books. She has me sign a pile, then brings out her scrapbook to show me her own brushes with fame. Her daughter dressed as a butterfly for a PTA performance, her son’s piano recital, a photo of the day she won a horticultural prize at the state fair in Syracuse…and a picture of that strange man with his harmonica.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Ben Long—the class clown. Moved to New York. Too bad about Ben. He was so clever,” Mrs. Benson sighs. “But he never amounted to anything. He lives at the Y or something like that. If he ever had a wife, she’s long gone now. No kids. Speaking of kids…” Now Mrs. Anderson is showing me a studio portrait of seven young people. Daddy smiles politely and has to tell her he has no grandchildren. She looks at me for an instant. Frowns.

  The official reunion dinner that night is elegant. At first Daddy and I sit nervously alone at a table set for eight, but soon it begins to fill up. An exceptionally flirtatious retiree takes the place beside me. I stifle laughter at his slightly suggestive jokes, uncomfortable until his wife winks and says, “He’s been like that for fifty years….” When I look up from this exchange, I see that a trim, lovely woman has taken the seat beside Daddy. With a soft warmth to his voice he introduces her.

  “This is Dr. Alice Smith. She is a professor at Columbia.”

  Daddy’s tone is wistful. Is he envious? Who wouldn’t be? Does he still harbor guilt all these years later that his principal decided it would be better to have a male valedictorian than a female?

  Suddenly I realize that perhaps it is I who is envious, but I have no time to explore the thought for my father is saying, “and this is my daughter, Teresa, a fine writer.”

  We chat. We eat. At the very next table sit six of Daddy’s grade-school teachers. In their midst is Ben Long, regaling them with stories about his adventures as a harmonica player. The teachers smile and nod, their white heads still teacherly, their old fingers patiently lifting silverware that seems immensely large in their hands.

  Soon it’s time for the awards—small trophies with a golden wreathed number fifty atop a marble base. The oldest—one of the teachers, of course. The youngest—I know a moment’s fear, but soon realize only people associated with the school are contenders. The most children. The one who’s come the farthest—the mango man wins here. The most successful: Columbia Professor Alice Smith and musician Ben Long, who, the chairman announces, “has always done things his own way….”

  Daddy sits quietly through all this, smiling, applauding, thinking his own thoughts.

  At the end, we all stand, hold hands and sing the school song. Alice Smith has tears in her eyes. The man next to me is making a suggestive gesture against my palm. Daddy is squeezing my fingers too tightly. And I, of course, am faking the words.

  The next morning, I have to leave early, but Daddy insists on taking me to breakfast at a restaurant atop one of the hills. Afterwards, we stare down at the hazy city nestled in its sleepy valley. “Daddy,” I ask, “do you think Mark Twain really was a bum?”

  He hesitates. He turns to me with a grin that’s the closest to mischievous that Daddy can get. “Sure he was. He lived off his in-laws. He played pool all day. He sat up here in the hills all summer and daydreamed year after year…. But he brought a lot of pleasure to a lot of people—showed them things they’d have never seen otherwise.”

  In silence we stare out at the scene. After what seems a long time, Daddy says, “It made me proud to have you here, Teresa. Far as I’m concerned, Ben Long and Alice Smith got nothing on me.”

  He turns and I kiss him softly on the cheek. The moment is so poignant I’m almost afraid one or both of us is going to cry. But neither does. I smile. Daddy winks. “Born to excel,” he declares, his words too close and low to echo from the hills. He glances out over them one more time. Then he takes my hand and together we head back to his car.

  THE TOY

  I am number 3214-19-4853972AF-61. I been that number since I got to be three years old and didn’t have to work outside in the fields anymore and could come into the factory.

  Now I been in the factory for four years and we make toys. There are trucks and games and guns and especially dolls. My job is to run the machine that puts the clothes on the dolls before another machine puts the dolls in boxes.

  So I get to be the last one to work on the doll before it’s done.

  This isn’t hard. The machine is very fast and does the job by itself. All I have to do is make sure the dress on the doll is folded tight so that it will go in the box without any trouble.

  In the years I been working in the factory, I seen lots and lots of beautiful dolls.

  For my own, I only have a doll made for me by my grandmother before she had to be taken to the old people place. It’s from a spare towel we had once and my grandmother made arms and legs and a nice face and even hair.

  I like to play with my doll, but I can’t help it, I always think about the girls who get to play with the dolls w
e make in the factory. I heard that all these toys—and especially the dolls—go to another country where every girl has a whole lot of dolls and sometimes even throws them away when she doesn’t feel like playing with them anymore.

  Maybe I was thinking about that the day one of the dolls I was working on got caught in the machine and her yellow dress got ripped.

  The big machine stopped. The mistake bell rang so loud I thought that the guards would come running.

  But I thought I was lucky because only two came. One of them was a young man with a real mean face. When I saw him looking at me, I was sure I was going to be punished. Maybe even sent downstairs.

  I never been downstairs. And I don’t know what happens there because I heard of a lot of workers who were sent down but I don’t know any who ever came back.

  Anyway. He just looked at me, the mean one, and then he clicked some keys on his hand computer. I don’t know what it said. Maybe my number or the number of the machine. Maybe he subtracted one from the number of dolls. I just don’t know.

  Then the other one came, with a smile on his face, but scary anyway. He picked up the doll with the ripped yellow dress. He pulled the dress up away from the doll’s legs, and he put his hand computer near the back of the doll where the secret code was. Then he nodded his head to the other man and they both started to walk away.

  I waited for a couple of minutes. Nothing happened. I just stood there. I was afraid the camera would pick me up and the supervisor would see that I wasn’t moving. I looked behind me to see if she was coming.

  And when I did, I saw that the mean-looking man had the doll in his hand. I was sure he was going to bring it to the office, sure I would be punished.

  But he stopped at the discard barrel, passed his computer over the code on the doll’s back one more time, then tossed it into the barrel. He had to press the lid hard because the barrel was so full. Then together with the other guard, he walked away.